OKH, go fly a kite

Friday

Mar 5, 2010 at 2:00 AM

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The news in the daily rankled me the other morning. By a 5-0 vote the Old King's Highway Regional Historic District Commission put the kibosh on Cape Cod Community College's request to install a wind turbine on its 40-year-old West Barnstable campus.

John Watters

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The news in the daily rankled me the other morning. By a 5-0 vote the Old King's Highway Regional Historic District Commission put the kibosh on Cape Cod Community College's request to install a wind turbine on its 40-year-old West Barnstable campus.

Ironically around the same time the state bought the piece of real estate to build 4Cs, Bob Dylan prophetically penned the lyric, “You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” in his counter-culture hit “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

Oh Bob, you old sage, take a whiff on me. The wind blows a rather stinky stench; the gentrified smell of NIMBY wafts under many people’s nostrils.

This is 2010, and the OKHRHDC think they are back in 1970, when oil was $4 a barrel. It wasn't until 1973 (coincidently the year the historic board was formed) that OPEC, in response to the United States' support of Israel in the Yom Kippur war, tripled the price of oil to $12 a barrel, which caused the gas crisis and gas rationing and began our country's urgent need to become energy self-sufficient (how far we've come is a topic for another day).

Thank God, the college was built three years before the regional hysterical commission was formed or there might never have been an institution of higher learning on the property today.

In the daily's coverage of the story it was reported that for every one speaker against the wind turbine, there were two speaking for it. Yet even though it seems the majority of the people who turned up and those who I have spoken to in passing are for it, the OKHRHDC ignored them and tossed a shutout, 5-zip.

Reportedly one couple who live on Acorn Drive, by their calculations a mere half mile away, felt the turbine would be like “dripping water,” and they have already decided the energy maker would give one of them “migraines.”

I'm sorry, but I do have a little idea of the topography of the area of Shootflying Hill, and I believe that from the community college campus the land rises west steadily upward toward the crest of Oak Street, and that Acorn Drive is on the downward slope of the other side. In fact I would think the steady sound of Route 6, approximately a half mile to the south from their house, would block out the sound of a whirring turbine. The "Dish Needle" rising almost double the size of the proposed windmill to their southeast blinks its red eye at them 24/7.

I feel compassion for the woman who suffers migraines but it seems that the placing of wind turbine, a technology that helps make us a little more energy self-sufficient, creates bigger headaches for those people trying to cut energy costs.

The hypocrisy stinks. Ask anyone and they say they are for wind power, but nobody wants to see or hear a wind turbine. Whether it's on the horizon in the middle of Nantucket Sound, or basking in the glow of a Burger King sign, the spinning blades of horror scare people to death.

More than a year ago Country Garden erected a wind turbine in the back of its West Main Street, Hyannis nursery. There were people alarmed by this at first, and it being a predominantly working class neighborhood they didn’t have the clout of a quasi-governmental bureaucratic committee the likes of OKH, so it went through without a lot of red tape. It’s there spinning away and I’ve never heard anybody complain about it even though they are in the shadow of it.

The college turbine was a no-brainer. It would save the college thousands of dollars in energy costs, and the surplus energy created would go to help low-income citizens afford housing. It would give students a live working laboratory to learn about and perhaps make advances in wind technology. And best of all, the $3 million-plus price was being paid for by a grant.

Cape Cod juts into the Atlantic and wind passes over it from every direction of the compass, making it a virtual ‘gusher” when it comes to generating clean power. It’s pretty sad that some will do everything to make that impossible just because they feel turbines will ruin their view.

A decade and the wind farm on the Sound is still a “paper” project. Wind is a golden opportunity, and it's sad people can’t see that.

As far as the OKH decision is concerned, shame on them. It's March, perfect weather for kites. They should go fly one.

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